Red Colony.com Webmaster Alex Moore recently sent and email to Steve Squyres, chairman of NASA's Space Science Advisory Committee, and he wrote back. The following transcript is a portion of that letter.

... what precautions are you taking to make sure that the same mistakes that took place in previous missions will not occur once again?

Plenty. The most obvious one is that this mission is adequately funded, with healthy cost reserves to help us deal with the problems that will occur. We've also got a much more rigorous review process planned than has been the case for some recent missions. Perhaps most importantly, we've got a lot of really major heritage... the Pathfinder entry/descent/landing system being the most significant example. We'll be the first mission ever launched to Mars with a landing system that has been demonstrated previously to work.